Tentacular, tentacular!

Beware, mortals: Cthulhu has returned, and he's armed with bacon.

Who needs yet another predictably lame fake news story to brighten up their April 1st? Not Cthulhu, creature of primeval nightmare, who dropped by our offices in Chicago a few weeks back with a proposal we couldn't refuse.

"FAKE NEWS IS SO 2007," said his voice as it echoed around inside my brain pan. Cthulhu was lounging in a spare armchair that no one has since had the courage to sit in, a lit cigar brandished in one tentacle as he talked. "I'M THINKING: SOMETHING AWESOME, STARRING ME. WITH CHOICES. AND MULTIPLE ENDINGS."

"Like the sort of interactive text adventure we all read as kids?" I asked.

"YES, BUT ONE FOR GROWN-UP GEEKS THAT TAKES PLACE IN VEGAS AND FEATURES BOOTH BABES, MADNESS, AND THE PROSPECT OF CLEANING OUT MY TENTACLE JAM FOR ALL ETERNITY. ALSO, A SINGING DAVID POGUE. AND SERGEY BRIN WEARING A JETPACK."

"It, err, sounds like you have this all planned out."

Cthulhu plucked a manila folder from somewhere within the non-Euclidean geometry of his manbag and dropped it on my desk with a thud.

"20,000 WORDS OF AWESOME. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO PAY ME. I JUST WANT THE EXPOSURE SO I CAN MEET CHICKS. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO R'YLEH? ONE WORD: BORING."

I flipped through the script—not half bad for something penned by a creature who spent, by all reliable accounts, most of its time dead but dreaming.

"LAME." Cthulhu shifted in his armchair, leaving traces of slime on the seat. "THIS IS BETTER. ALSO, I WON'T FEAST ON YOUR BRAINS IF YOU RUN MINE INSTEAD."

And really—who could argue with that logic?

Tentacular, tentacular!

"What is it with geeks and bacon?" you ask yourself as you stand just outside the main exhibition hall of the Opulentium Royale, Vegas' newest monument to excess.

Built in the shape of a massive 1950's UFO, the hotel squats on its patch of desert like an otherworldly metal pimple, its revolving dome housing a surprisingly good steakhouse. The Opulentium has everything a discriminating alien abductee could want, except the anal probings—though you spent the predawn hours learning that a session at the baccarat tables could produce a similar feeling of total violation.

But duty calls, and when the hotel's exhibition hall opens at noon for the third and final day of the Colossal Computer Confab, you tighten your soup-stained tie and slouch off to the 13th floor of the spacecraft to do some detective work.

When the Confab organizers called you yesterday and agreed to pay for your first-class plane ticket and a "Close Encounters" suite, their sense of desperation was palpable over the phone. Desperation, in your lengthy private eye experience, is a good indicator that no one's going to be raising awkward questions about those minibar purchases when they show up on the expense account.

And who wouldn't be desperate in the same situation? Putting on the world's largest computer show, only to have attendees start going mad at an alarming rate—it's enough to give any trade show organizer the jitters. Conferences don't last long once they acquire a reputation for creeping insanity.

Outside the exhibition hall, a vendor behind a silver cart fries up mounds of bacon to fill his curious food concoctions: the "Dead but Dreaming Burger (with Bacon)," something called "R'lyeh Ratatouille (with Bacon)," and a "Non-Euclidean Taco (with Bacon)." A plushie Cthulhu, beaming like a beneficent uncle, is taped to the front of the silver cart by one of his tentacles.

Your rumbling stomach poses a dilemma: all those hours of losing money in the casino have made you hungry enough to eat a plate of tacos, Euclidean or otherwise. On the other hand, through the doors ahead, geeks are going mad.

It's only a matter of time before the rest of the crowd hears the rumors of insanity and panics like a UFO watcher alone on a rural road. If that happens, you can kiss your retainer goodbye—and can give up on that plan to drink the minibar dry.